Awful People - Review

Latest Music Bar, Brighton

****

Written by Julie Burchill and Daniel Raven

Directed by Carole Todd

Joseph White, Temisis Conway, Seth Morgan and Deborah Kearne in rehearsal

Awful People is the latest play from Julie Burchill - this time co-authored with husband Daniel Raven - that proves to be a morality tale for our time.

India (Deborah Kearne) and Aonghas, pronounced Seamus, (Seth Morgan) are a bitterly estranged couple in early middle age who are nonetheless still pooling their creative talents together in the vain hope of penning a rap version of The Wind in the Willows. Their infertility, recently addressed by IVF, has seen them become late-onset parents to offstage toddler twins. 

While Aonghas lives in a nearby flat, India shares her comfortably appointed home with Galyna (Temisis Conway) a Ukrainian refugee who she has billeted in the room next door to the kitchen and tasked not just with the household’s domestic chores, but also with providing care to the toddlers.

Both Aonghas and Guardian reading India are fleshed out as grotesques and while their callous Class A drug-addled existence may at times verge on the caricature, there are piercing moments of clarity that define Burchill’s ability to skewer these chattering (il)liberal metropolitans with their own hypocrisies. When late in the play Galyna reveals that she is a qualified doctor and India exclaims “You never told us”, the Ukrainian’s reply is brilliantly devastating: “You never asked”.

Completing the quartet of players is Joseph White as Gideon, a Deliveroo motorcyclist. Born in Britain but of Nigerian descent, Gideon has been brought up with a strong Christian ethic and an equally firm moral code. From a poor background, and having lost a brother to drug-running violence, (possibly having delivered drugs to Aonghas in the past), Gideon’s take on the world is wise and measured and his scorn for Aonghas, to whom he is delivering a smashed avocado sandwich, is palpable. 

Aonghas and India view immigrant communities as being there to serve them on low wages. Gideon and Galyna however, having experienced the harshness of life’s knocks, bring a more sanguine take on society and view with contempt the virtue signalling of their patrician patrons. Gideon describes divorce as a “disease of the affluent” and comments, with chilling perception, of the likelihood of the twins growing up into arrogant replicants of their parents.

As Aonghas behaves with a casual misogyny, so does India express an Emma Thompson-like contempt for the UK “Another day, another reason to hate this miserable island” with both of them spitting sneerful Remoaning contempt at the ruin and inconvenience brought to them by Brexit. It is the youthful Gideon and Galyna who rise to become the adults of this piece.

At around 75 minutes, the play is short and (bitter) sweet. All 4 performers turn in assured work, deftly directed by Carole Todd and wrapped up at the end with an unexpected but gorgeously sung solo from Conway. 

Only on for a tiny run in Brighton’s Fringe Festival and coming in with visibly low running costs, Awful People deserves a wider audience as there are millions across the country to whom Burchill and Raven’s words will resonate with truth. The work is crying out for a British theatre (either London or regional) to stage this provocative piece.

Runs until 25th May

Goodbye Easy Street - Review

Vout-O-Reenee's, London

****

Lyrics and book by Julie Burchill

Music by Robin Watt

Additional dialogue and lyrics by Jim Owen and Daniel Raven

Goodbye Easy Street, Julie Burchill’s new musical, made its debut in the capital at the intimate Vout O Renee’s club on the fringes of the City of London. Burchill’s first iteration of the show, Hard Times On Easy Street had played in Brighton earlier this year. Since then she has taken a sharp pencil to her prose and the result is a slicker, tighter, wittier show.

Featuring a cast of just two, Deborah Kearne and Temisis Conway return as Elle and Anna, two former nightclub singers now the resident turns on a cruise liner. Both in love with each other, the younger bisexual Anna is taking the cruise gig to escape her unrequited love for gay club manager Otto. The worldy-wise Elle has a far more sanguine view of the world. Together however, the pair’s relationship is passionate, credible and fuelled by sharply-tongued banter

In stripping her original show down to the two women only, Burchill’s scripting scalpel re-arranges her earlier love triangle into a far more plausible parallelogram. The interval has been ditched too with the whole piece coming in at just under the hour. Best of all, away from the original over-complicated structure, this simple little love story allows Burchill’s wit to take flight. She’s a gifted writer and her lyrics and dialogue sizzle with sexual frisson and just a hint of political edginess too.

Early on in the show Conway stuns with the numbers Lazy Kind Of Love and Incorrigible You, with Kearne soaring in Speculate To Accumulate. There is a hint of Gershwin in Conway’s There For You, while the pair’s endgame duet of Let’s Be Selfish /Self Care sparkles in its wit and rhythm.

Burchill’s amassed years of premier league writing are on display throughout the piece – her understanding of sex and relationships is blistering, making her points through the most economic use of English. Elle speaks of having had her past love life “fringed by crime tape” – a fabulous metaphor!

Burchill’s Woke-sceptic and staunchly feminist take on the world blaze through this show that demands a bigger audience.

Hard Times on Easy Street - Review

Latest Music Bar, Brighton

***

Music by Robin Watt

Lyrics and book by Julie Burchill

Directed by Seth Morgan

Hard Times on Easy Street marks a brave foray into the world of musical theatre from writer Julie Burchill. A paean to Brighton, the city that she has made her home for 25 years, Burchill’s show is set in a nightclub and for this week, is performed immersively at Brighton's  Latest Music Bar venue.

Middle-aged Otto (Matt Wright) has owned and run his Easy Street nightclub for years. Resident diva Elle (Deborah Kearne) is as wise she is weary for her 50 years, when bustling into their lives comes 20-something Anna (Temisis Conway) who’s auditioning to be the new chanteuse. Joseph White completes the Easy Street team as bouncer Precious.

We learn that Otto is gay with an unseen long-term partner.  Anna is virginal and fancies Otto, while lesbian Elle can barely keep her hands off the younger girl. When bisexual Rory (Seth Morgan), a man with a murky past and a ruthless corporate and sexual appetite who is eager to buy Easy Street, appears on the scene there are moments of menace and exploitation that pierce the otherwise halcyon idyll of the club trio’s curious triangle. Burchill certainly manages to tick off L,G,B and Straight from the checklist of today’s lexicon of love and if some of her dialogue is a tad cheesy, her acerbic look at some of today’s common hypocrisies, for example society’s more tolerant (blind-eyed even) attitude to same-sex predation, makes for a refreshing perspective in the world of new musical theatre writing.

The music is brilliant. Robin Watt, an accomplished saxophonist who alongside Michael Edmonds on guitar plays live each night, has penned a score that’s heavy on jazz and R&B. It’s a delight to listen to, with some numbers, particularly Otto's Incorrigible You sounding as though they could have been lifted straight from the American Songbook.

Currently standing at around two 45 minute acts with a 15 minute interval, if some of the writing were pruned and the interval dropped, it would make for a punchier one-act piece. The songs are deliciously tight though and with a sharper pencil and a venue that’s easier on the neck-strain than the Latest’s head-swivelling sightlines, this could be the genesis of quite a show.

Runs until May 23rd